Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) Series

The Drug Abuse Warning Network
(DAWN) is a nationally representative public health surveillance
system that continuously monitors drug-related visits to hospital
emergency departments (EDs). A DAWN case is any ED visit involving
recent drug use that is implicated in the ED visit. DAWN captures both
ED visits that are directly caused by drugs and those in which drugs
are a contributing factor but not the direct cause of the ED
visit. Annually, DAWN produces estimates of drug-related visits to
hospital EDs for the nation as a whole and for selected metropolitan
areas.

DAWN is used to monitor trends in drug misuse and abuse,
identify the emergence of new substances and drug combinations, assess
health hazards associated with drug abuse, and estimate the impact of
drug misuse and abuse on the Nation's health care system. DAWN relies
on a longitudinal probability sample of hospitals located throughout
the United States. To be eligible for selection into the DAWN sample,
a hospital must be a non-federal, short-stay, general surgical and
medical hospital located in the United States, with at least one
24-hour ED. The dataset includes demographics, drugs involved
in the ED visit, (up to 16 drugs from 2004 through 2008 and up to 22 drugs from 2009 through 2011), toxicology confirmation, route of administration,
type of case, and disposition of the patient following the visit.

Prepared DAWN Emergency Department National and Metro data tables are available on the DAWN website. The DAWN website also provides access to DAWN reports.